Meal planning apps - Pepperplate and Big Oven side by side reviews

As I mentioned last month, I wanted a meal planning app that would help me make grocery lists. I googled a bit and found Big Oven, and tested it out. I was pretty happy with it and you can read more about my experience with it here.

I was planning to go on with Big Oven but a couple commenters mentioned Pepperplate and I decided it seemed only fair to try that as well so I started playing around with it right away and used it to help plan meals and grocery shopping while I was up north with my sister (I was cooking meals for us and trying to get their freezer stocked up a bit, so there was a lot of grocery shopping!).

Pepperplate is similar to Big Oven in the sense that it's a meal planning app that syncs across your desktop and mobile devices. You enter recipes (or clip them from websites) and then Pepperplate allows you to choose which recipes you want on which days, and creates a shopping list for you.

Let me admit upfront that I've only scratched the surface of these apps the last couple months, so if you have been using them for a while and have feedback, feel free to correct me! Here's my impression of the two apps (sorry this is so long winded but you know how seriously I feel about meal planning!).

Big Oven vs. Pepperplate



Entering recipes: Both apps have a large upfront time cost. You have to get all your frequently used recipes uploaded and it takes a while. I did all this upfront work on my desktop computer. Both sites claim that you can clip recipes from websites with compatible formats, but I found that most blogs aren't compatible, so you end up entering recipes by hand a lot. Big Oven has the edge here - I found that they can pull from more websites and if they can't pull, they have a nice feature that pulls up the text from the page you're looking at and places it side by side with a manual entry screen so you can quickly copy and paste everything for entry. Pepperplate just gives you an error if it can't pull the recipe, so you have to go back and forth between the page with the recipe and their manual entry page, copying and pasting. For both apps, once you get your most frequently used recipes entered, life gets a lot easier. Anytime someone mentions a recipe I should try, I can quickly enter it and then it'll be there next time I'm meal planning. Previously I would usually forget about recipes people had recommended by the time I was planning the next month's meals and it was easy to end up in a rut. Edge: Big Oven

Meal planning: Both apps have a calendar function that allows you to choose recipes from your collection and add them to a particular date. You could plan breakfast, lunch and dinner if you wanted (I generally only plan dinner). Which is better for meal planning? Pepperplate's interface looks nicer, but you can only see one week at a time, as far as I can tell. This is frustrating to me since I want to plan a month at a time and I'd like to see all four weeks on my screen at once. Big Oven allows you to see the full month, which I love. Big Oven also has a nice feature where when you look at the meal planning calendar all your recipes show up in the side bar and you can quickly drag them over to the calendar. Pepperplate, on the other hand, has you click on a calendar date and then start to type the name of the recipe you want. As you're typing it quickly pulls up any recipes that match the name (so you don't usually have to type more than a few letters). This looks much sleeker but because my biggest issue during meal planning is thinking of what recipes I want to use, it would be nice to have them all laid out on the sidebar. I use a little workaround and have my recipe list open in a new tab and I scroll through it to choose recipes and then go back to the calendar tab to enter them. Edge: Big Oven

Grocery lists: Both apps will generate a grocery list for you based on your meal planning. Big Oven has a nice feature that allows you to scale recipes up or down and then has you review each recipe to deselect ingredients if you already have them. However, Pepperplate is the big winner here because of one crucial feature - you can create custom "aisles" for grocery items. This makes Pepperplate a million times better for me because I shop at different grocery stores for different things. I only buy meat at Whole Foods, I get most of my cheese and frozen stuff from Trader Joe's, I get fresh produce from the local ethnic market. With Big Oven, I would have the app generate the list for me and then I would write it all out again on paper so that it was categorized by grocery store. This still saved me time and headaches, but with Pepperplate I can do that all virtually. I created my custom "aisles" and then specified which categories should go in those aisles. This gives me a pretty well categorized shopping list right out of the gate and then I can quickly move items around or add in items the program couldn't categorize. It's really lovely, especially because it means I can just use the list on my phone instead of carrying around the paper one. Edge: Pepperplate

Cost: Pepperplate is free (they have ads on the desktop interface but I've found them unobtrusive - I had to check to confirm that they did because I couldn't remember noticing them and I couldn't figure out how they are making money - still not really sure what their business model is). Big Oven is free with ads and certain limitations on how many recipes you can upload. Upgrading to a Pro membership is inexpensive ($2/mo or $20/year) and gives you no ads + unlimited uploads. Edge: Pepperplate

Again, I do all the set up and actual meal planning on my desktop computer and use my phone for pulling up the grocery lists or the recipes.

Small feature that Big Oven has that I really appreciate - when you're looking at a recipe in the app, your phone doesn't go to sleep. It drives me a little nuts when I'm cooking and constantly having to unlock my phone because it times out while I'm chopping something. I don't want to tinker with my lock screen settings all the time so I just live with it, but it's so nice not to have to deal with it.

So after all this, it seems like I should be choosing Big Oven, right? Actually I'm leaning towards Pepperplate. The main reason I wanted a meal planning app was to generate my huge grocery lists and the advantage of being able to customize my list outweighs the fact that I can't see a whole month laid out at one time (and who knows - maybe they'll update that at some point in the future?).

If you have any questions, or feedback of your own, leave it in the comments!

FYI - I'm not doing my standard monthly meal planning post this month because it's going to be a little nutty for us and I'm taking it week by week and being flexible (and acknowledging that September can be our hottest month and I might not want to cook much). But I'm going to be excited to get back into it as the weather cools down (fingers crossed) in October.

Monthly meal planning - August (and Big Oven!)

I'm playing August almost completely by ear, hence the very few planned meals. My sister is expecting her second baby in early August and I'm just waiting for the call. It would be very sweet if my new nephew decided to hang in there until I'm scheduled to arrive (his sister was really accommodating this way) but I'm prepared to head up earlier if need be. So this is really just 1.5 weeks of meal planning, but I am using a fun new tool that I wanted to share.



Meals for August:
Miso salmon + Asian chopped salad - both new to me. The salad recipe is for mason jar portions, but I'll probably just make one big salad and maybe set aside one (undressed) serving for lunch.

Meat and veggie balls (in marinara sauce) + green salad - I love these meatballs and haven't made them in forever. They're a great summer dish.

Farro salad with roasted veg - Another tried and true. I made this last month and it was a hit with D's brother, so I'm repeating it.

Coconut, tomato and red lentil dhal - Almost every month. Not sure I'll get up the energy to make saag to go with it.

Modified version of Heather's quinoa salad - We ate this a lot two summers ago but I haven't made it lately. It holds up well in the fridge so I figured it was a good dish to make right before I leave (assuming the timing works out!).

I also got us a couple packs of veggie burgers for quick meals. Trader Joe's has the best veggie burger options and I'm tempted by all of them but we usually end up with the veggie masala burgers, because potatoes are the best.

In meal planning news - I'm experimenting with using Big Oven for meal planning. The actual monthly meal plan is easy enough for me to do on paper. Usually I shuffle through my recipe binder (or the stacks of recipes I haven't put away) and then just sketch out the grid. The sucky part comes next - doing the shopping list. I have to look at each recipe and write down the ingredients, then go back again to compile them into a single shopping list. It usually takes about 5 sheets of paper and I forget at least one thing. It's not a huge deal, since it's basically 30 minutes out of my entire month, but last month it finally annoyed me enough that I went looking for a better option and found Big Oven.

The premise is pretty simple. You can search for recipes directly on Big Oven, or "clip" them from various websites (how simple this is depends on whether the site is using formatting that is compatible - my blog is 100% not compatible because of my formatting, sadly, but it's still fairly simple to enter the recipe), or enter it by hand. Then you can use the meal planning feature to drag recipes from your collection to the calendar and (this is the part I'm excited about) export a grocery list.

This is what my meal planner looks like for August on the website (yes, I still write it out by hand because I like having something to stick up on the fridge).



They offer a two month trial of the Pro membership, which gives you an ad-free experience, unlimited recipe uploads (although I can't figure out how many recipes you can add with the free membership) and custom folder sorting. I've been using that so far and I think I might go ahead and pay to keep using it, since the cost is pretty reasonable ($1.99/mo or $19.99/year).

There was a fairly big time investment to start, since I had to add my most frequently used recipes. I ended up creating a folder that is just called "All my recipes" in addition to my category folders, since sometimes I just want to see everything at once. I'm still getting used to the interface but sometimes I find things a bit wonky. One small example - you can organize your recipes by dragging them into folders (love), but unfortunately the Pinterest button shows up almost exactly where you need to grab the picture and sometimes makes it difficult.

The grocery list feature works really well in general. You can specify what time frame you want to buy groceries for and then the program pops up each recipe to give you a chance to uncheck ingredients you already have. Once you've done that for each recipe in the time period, it will compile everything (sort of - it won't add up how many carrots you need, but at least it sorts everything so that each type of item is grouped) and you can have it emailed to you or just access it on your phone. I end up re-writing my grocery list on paper at the end, because I like to split it up by store. But having everything from each recipe automatically pulled together is amazing.

Because I like to do one massive shopping trip at the beginning of the month for any non-perishables or hearty stuff, and then just purchase vegetables weekly, I do need to figure out a way to modify it a little. Because you have the option to make edits when you are checking each recipe's ingredients (while Big Oven compiles your grocery list) I've just been adding a note to the "notes" section next to the ingredients that I want to buy during a specific week. That note will show up on your grocery list.

Overall, I'm feeling really good about this and I think it will make it easier for me to try out new recipes. In my paper system the most often used recipes tend to rotate back into the top of the stack, and if I lose a recipe sheet then I forget about it for ages. With the online system, I can quickly add in any recipe that catches my eye, even if I'm not meal planning right at the moment. You can flag recipes as "want to try" and scroll through those first.

Anyone already using Big Oven care to chime in? I'm still so new to it that this is all first impressions.

Meal planning - July wrap up

Whew.



It was a busy month. As I mentioned, I bumped up my planning to four meals a week, to accommodate our slightly larger family last month. As it turns out, four meals a week is pretty much perfect for three adults on a good week. We had two weeks where we were all at home for dinner almost every night and it was nice. But then everyone got busy at work and the last two weeks were pretty unpredictable and we all seemed to eat at different times. I cut out a few meals to accommodate this and it was fine.

I didn't try anything new last month, so this is going to be very short.

But, I do have the PDF of the monthly meal planning template for you, in case you want it! It's very simple, but I much prefer using the grid to hand sketching one every month, so hopefully it'll be useful for some of you. You can download it right here.

Monthly meal planning - July

So I wasn't going to meal plan this month because it seemed like it might be nice to have a break for summer. But then that's exactly what I had the last week of June, since I'd left the schedule open, and let me tell you - it wasn't fun to go back to figuring out meals on the fly, especially when we'd just come back from vacation and I was feeling tired.

And so I'm back to it for July, with even more meals. I'm going to be cooking four nights a week this month instead of three, because D's little brother is staying with us for a bit and I'm hoping that this will be the correct amount of scaling up for us. If we're ending up with too much food, I'll readjust partway through the month and start deleting meals. If it isn't enough food then I'm moving out and everyone can fend for themselves. Kidding. Sort of.



I am making it easier on myself because I'm sticking with tried and true recipes and not doing anything new.

Recipes for July: 

Chicken tikka masala + saag - Made this for the first time last month and D requested it again immediately.

Brown rice noodle bowls with stir fried vegetables (x2) - no recipe, I just stir fry a bunch of veggies with some ginger and garlic and the extra firm tofu from Trader Joe's (it has the best texture!) and toss with some Soyaki marinade (also from TJ's) and the cooked noodles. 

Farro salad with roasted vegetables and fontina - Haven't made this in a long time but we used to make it a lot.

Coconut, tomato and red lentil dal - Always popular around here.

Spicy sloppy joes + salad - This is my go to recipe for sloppy joes and I'm figuring these will be a hit with the teenager. I'm not really modifying our regular meal planning much, but I thought it might be nice to add in a few recipes for him that aren't lentil or vegetable based.

Spiced butternut squash salad with lentils and goat cheese (x2) - Apparently I make this every month now. I'm lazy and always buy the pre-cubed squash from TJ's. It's only a tiny bit more expensive than buying whole squash and it saves a lot of time.

Rainbow power salad with roasted chickpeas - Solid spiralizer recipe, should be good for summer weather.

Red lentils and spinach in masala sauce - My current favorite red lentil recipe.

Spicy shrimp with pesto zucchini noodles - I would eat this all the time if the cost of shrimp (and the guilt associated with it) weren't so burdensome. Last time I made it I doubled the pesto recipe and put the extra in the freezer, so this time around it will be super simple.

Sweet potato bolognese + salad - again, no real recipe. It's just 1/2 lb ground beef, 1/2 lb hot sausage, 1 jar marinara and 2 large sweet potatoes that have been spiralized. (spiralizer post is here)

Indian dal nirvana + saag - Love this recipe and it's a nice change from all the red lentil recipes.

Grilled shrimp and vegetables with pearl couscous - One of our favorite summer dishes. Holds up so well in the fridge, good cold, also great on top of kale salad.

Homemade pizza night - I prepped for this over the holiday weekend by making a batch of my favorite pizza dough and then freezing the portions. That way I just have to defrost and it's a quick weeknight meal. One batch makes enough for four pizzas, so we'll probably get two meals out of it.

Monthly meal planning - June wrap up

June was a little hit or miss because of guests and traveling, but I made it through. I skipped a couple meals and then moved a few things around to make it work.



New recipes this month - 

Broccoli rabe with spicy Italian sausage and zucchini noodles - Ugh. I really, really didn't like this. I like broccoli rabe, but this just didn't come together for me. We ate it, but I ended up tossing out the last serving because I just didn't want to eat it as leftovers again.

Chicken tikka masala + saag - New to me recipe recommended by a reader. This recipe is a bit more work than the slow cooker version that I've used in the past but it is 100% worth it. The flavor is so good. I made this while my sister, brother-in-law and niece were here and everyone loved it. I'll probably keep both versions in my repertoire, since you do have to devote a fair amount of time to this one so it's best suited for weekends. Note - you can prep the sauce ahead of time, which would make it doable for a weeknight meal.

Monthly meal planning - June

June is a little weird because we're having guests and I have some traveling to do and the way the weeks fall on my calendar I'm planning for five weeks instead of four. I'm not going to freak out if things don't work out as planned, and I'm barely planning anything for the end of the month because travel and then coming home is rough and I'm not sure if I'll feel like cooking. If I know we're facing a busy time I make sure that I stock our freezer with a few Trader Joe's meals. Cheaper, easier and quicker than take out, and they'll hold if we magically manage to cook a real meal instead.



Recipes this month - 

Sweet potato bolognese - again, no real recipe. It's just 1/2 lb ground beef, 1/2 lb hot sausage, 1 jar marinara and 2 large sweet potatoes that have been spiralized. (spiralizer post is here)

Brown rice noodle and vegetable bowl - no recipe, I just stir fry a bunch of veggies with some ginger and garlic and the extra firm tofu from Trader Joe's (it has the best texture!) and toss with some Soyaki marinade (also from TJ's) and the cooked noodles. 

Rainbow power salad with roasted chickpeas - nice spiralizer recipe that I tried out last month. 

Red lentils and spinach in masala sauce - the winner of the red lentil recipe showdown last month.  

Spicy shrimp with pesto zucchini noodles - spiralizer recipe that I tried out and loooved last month. 

Spiced butternut squash salad with lentils and goat cheese - one of my favorite recipes lately and it makes a great work lunch. I always toss the arugula lightly with some balsamic dressing. I still use this basic recipe and almost always have a jar of it in the fridge. Lately I've been adding a shallot in there, along with garlic and whatever herbs I have on hand. If I'm packing it for work, I put the lentils, butternut squash and goat cheese at the bottom of a large container, then put plenty of arugula on top and pack a small container of dressing to toss it with right before eating. 

Sweet potato dirty rice - easy, satisfying recipe. I get spicy andouille sausage from Whole Foods and I usually add more peppers than the recipe calls for.

Broccoli rabe with spicy Italian sausage and zucchini noodles - new to me recipe that I've been meaning to try out for a while.

Chicken tikka masala + saag - New to me recipe recommended by a reader. I love the quick and easy chicken tikka masala recipe that I've used in the past, but this one looks extra delicious.

Meal planning review - May

Still loving the monthly meal plans. I'm doing so much better with cooking on weeknights and we're barely eating out at all because we're usually well stocked with leftovers (part of that is that D has been working a lot of evenings, so there are more leftovers). I originally didn't think I'd continue this during the summer (because usually our summers end up being much less structured) but it's been so nice that I wanted to keep going. 



I mixed it up a lot more than usual last month! I'm barely doing anything new in June, though. so next month will be a bit boring. 

New recipes from May - 

Spiced red lentils with caramelized onions and spinach - This was pretty good, but in the May red lentil showdown the red lentils and spinach in masala sauce won out. That one is a definite keeper, and I'll be making it again. The masala paste is a little more effort but totally worth it. You do have to watch the spice, though. I'd start low and adjust up to taste.

Rainbow power salad with roasted chickpeas - New to me spiralizer recipe. Loved this one! The green sauce that you make for it is so flavorful that I kept snitching bites of it while I was cooking. It has an avocado base, similar to the avocado pasta sauce recipe that I love from Oh She Glows, but all the herbs take it up several levels. The veggie noodles are left raw in this recipe, so when I packed the leftovers I made sure to keep the sauce separate until I was ready to eat. The recipe says this is 2 - 4 servings but I think it's more like 2 generous servings or 3 side portions. 

Chicken korma + rice + saag - New to me recipe, recommended by a reader. This was very good, but fairly similar to the cashew nut chicken I already make regularly (although I did like all the extra cilantro). I tried this saag recipe and it was a big loser. Just sooo bland. It also wasn't the one I meant to try. Apparently there are two saag recipes on Chowhound and I looked at one and then printed the wrong one. I'm so over hunting for saag recipes at this point, so I'm going to stick with the one I liked from Food52 (note - there are also multiple recipes for saag on Food52, but I've only tried this one). 

Spicy shrimp with pesto zucchini noodles - Another spiralizer recipe from Pinch of Yum. I also loved this one. The pesto is amped up with spinach and kale, and it's amazing. It's also vegan, since it doesn't call for the traditional parm, and I like that it calls for almonds, since we always have almonds in the house. I will absolutely make this again. Also held up well for lunch the next day, I just put the noodles on one side of the dish and the pesto on the other and then tossed it together when it was time to eat. 



Bonus - I ended up making this naan recipe. I usually have a package of the Trader Joe's frozen naan, but I didn't realize we were out and I really wanted it. Waiting two hours for your naan to rise > braving TJ's during rush hour, right? Anyways, this was a very good recipe, and it was easy, but I still find that nothing beats that frozen stuff. We're so obsessed that if we're getting Indian take-out we'll often not order any naan and pull some out of the freezer instead. I'm not sure how they do it. 

Monthly meal planning - May

Actually trying out a few new recipes this month. As the weather starts to warm up I'm looking forward to more veggie noodle bowls using the spiralizer, so I found some recipes to test.



Recipes this month - 

Sweet potato bolognese - again, no real recipe. It's just 1/2 lb ground beef, 1/2 lb hot sausage, 1 jar marinara and 2 large sweet potatoes that have been spiralized. (spiralizer post is here)

Spiced red lentils with caramelized onions and spinach - New to me, looks good. 

Brown rice noodle and vegetable bowl (x2) - No recipe, I just stir fry a bunch of veggies with some ginger and garlic and the extra firm tofu from Trader Joe's (it has the best texture!) and toss with some Soyaki marinade (also from TJ's) and the cooked noodles. This month I'm excited because I found some brown rice ramen noodles at Costco and I think they'll be delicious in this. 

Rainbow power salad with roasted chickpeas - New to me spiralizer recipe. Looks hearty. 

Red lentils and spinach in masala sauce - I was looking for a new red lentil recipe and couldn't choose, so I've inadvertently created a red lentil show down this month. We'll see which recipe we like best. 

Chicken korma + rice + saag - New to me recipe, recommended by a reader. I really liked the Food52 saag recipe I tried last month (also recommended by a reader - you guys are the best) but I might try the Chowhound recipe this month. It uses frozen spinach, which means you don't have to blend at the end. Worth it? 

Coconut curried red lentils + saag + naan - Our standard favorite around here. 

Spicy shrimp with pesto zucchini noodles - Another spiralizer recipe from Pinch of Yum. I've never tried their recipes before and I have two in one month. Fingers crossed! 

Spiced butternut squash salad with lentils and goat cheese - One of my favorite recipes lately. I do toss the arugula lightly with some balsamic dressing. I still use this basic recipe and almost always have a jar of it in the fridge. Lately I've been adding a shallot in there, along with garlic and whatever herbs I have on hand. 

Cashew nut chicken + saag + cauliflower rice - Using the package of sauce that I froze last time I made it. I get the cauliflower rice frozen from Trader Joe's (I'm lazy, and hate cleaning all the cauliflower bits out of the food processor) and saute it with a bit of onion and garlic.

Monthly meal planning - April revisited

April flew right by me.

I completely fell off the wagon last week. Work was killing me, and I couldn't motivate to face the kitchen after really long, stressful days. I ended up not cooking at all. I can barely even remember what we ate. I think we had a salad on Monday and then quesadillas on Tuesday and then I skipped dinner altogether on Wednesday and D picked up takeout on Thursday and we went out with friends on Friday to celebrate the week finally being over. It isn't too big a deal in terms of wasted groceries because the salmon was already frozen, so I just left it in the freezer and then I stuck the andouille sausage in there as well so we can use it later. The other ingredients (bell peppers, broccoli, etc) will get used up in meals this week.

This also means I didn't try any new recipes this month. Whomp whomp. Let's hope May goes better.

Edit - just realized that isn't true! I tried this new saag recipe and liked it way more than the previous one I tested. I 100% forgot to put any milk or cream in at the end and it was still delicious. I do hate having to haul out the blender for a side dish, but I might have to accept that it's just necessary for this.  I might still test out the Chowhound recipe though, just to see how it goes, because it doesn't require blending.

Once a month meal planning - April

And April!



As you can see, I started messing around with this month before it was even properly off the ground. We had friends coming over for dinner and I felt like making something a little more special than our usual weeknight meals so I shifted things around a bit.

Recipes for this month: 

Sweet potato noodles and bolognese - again, no real recipe. It's just 1/2 lb ground beef, 1/2 lb hot sausage, 1 jar marinara and 2 large sweet potatoes that have been spiralized. (spiralizer post is here)

Vegetable bowls with brown rice noodles - I gave up on the recipe for this one. I'm just winging it by stir frying some vegetables and using TJ's Soyaki sauce. It works out great.

Enchilada chicken soup - we never seem to get tired of this one.

Sweet potato dirty rice - got a nice Andouille sausage from WF for this month.

Black lentils with caramelized onions - a perennial favorite. I only make a half batch if I just want four servings. Otherwise we'll be eating it for days (which is sometimes good).

Sweet potato, kale and sausage soup - using homemade broth, which makes it a million times better. We tend to get a WF rotisserie chicken a couple times a month for weekend meals, and I'll save the bones in the freezer and use them to make broth. This recipe takes a ton of broth, so having homemade really helps.

Spiced butternut squash salad with lentils and goat cheese - love this salad and you can easily do most of the prep on Sunday if you need a super quick weeknight option.

Cashew nut chicken and saag - I made a triple batch of sauce last time and then froze it with the chicken broth, so this will be super easy this month. I didn't love the saag recipe that I used last month, so I'm thinking about trying this one (minus the tofu, since I just need a side dish).

Salmon kabayaki (+ broccoli) - new recipe. I tend to shy away from cooking fish because it's expensive and I'm always nervous that I'll mess it up and waste it. And it goes bad so quickly in the fridge that it doesn't work well when I only grocery shop on the weekends. But I impulse purchased a bag of frozen salmon fillets from Costco, so I need to get over it.

Sweet potato and black bean chili - a very reliable way to use up all the odds and ends from spiralizing sweet potatoes.

Once a month meal planning - March revisited

Still enjoying our monthly meal planning system, even if this particular month was a little long.



Despite our short trip up north we managed to keep it together pretty well.

New recipes I tried this month (Original plan with all the recipes listed is posted here):

Brown rice noodle and vegetable bowls - I ended up not really following this recipe, so I can't review it properly, sorry! I just stir fried a bunch of vegetables and then tossed them with some brown rice noodles and some Trader Joe's Soyaki sauce. Worked well, though, and super easy. Some variation of this will probably become part of our standard repertoire.

Crockpot chicken tikka masala + saag (using that recipe minus the paneer) + cauliflower rice from TJ's. The crockpot chicken tikka masala recipe was pretty great and I'll move it into regular rotation. I was not in love with the saag recipe, so I think I need to keep searching.

Dal nirvana - delicious! I make the black lentils with caramelized onions a lot, and while we love them, it was a nice change of pace to make a different black lentil dish. The cream makes this dish feel decadent and the cayenne gives it some good heat.

Once a month meal planning - March

March is a little wonky because we'll be taking a short trip and the way the calendar works out for my system it's actually five weeks instead of four. I'm trying to add in more side dishes this month so that we're getting more veg. I'm normally really lazy about sides other than salads but now that I have the bigger kitchen there's no excuse. I guess I'm still being lazy because mostly what I'm doing this month is adding a big side of saag to our crockpot meals. I love cooked spinach and since I'm not doing any cooking on crockpot nights anyways, it won't feel like I'm adding too much extra work. Baby steps, right?



Recipes for this month:

Spicy tuna cakes + arugula salad (thinking I'll improvise a Meyer lemon and olive oil dressing for this) - I love this simple recipe and I haven't made it in a few months. I do NOT use the muffin pan because I find they stick like crazy and cleaning a muffin pan is annoying in the best of circumstances. I just form patties and bake them on the Silpat.

Braised cabbage + poached eggs - a perennial favorite. I always like to add some thinly sliced fennel and extra carrots.

Sweet potato dirty rice - another good spiralizer recipe.

Brown rice noodle and vegetable bowls - planning to increase the veg:noodle ratio by getting some large carrots so that I can spiralize them and have carrot noodles. Hope the recipe is good, since I haven't tried it before and I'm using it twice this month!

Crockpot chicken tikka masala + saag (using that recipe minus the paneer) + cauliflower rice (I get it frozen from Trader Joe's) - I haven't tried this recipe yet but I'm hoping it will be a keeper.

Dal nirvana + saag + naan (frozen from Trader Joe's) - Another new to me recipe, recommended by a kind reader!

Roasted root vegetables with soft polenta - Not really using a recipe for this, but similar to this one (+ some mushrooms, probably) except that I like polenta soft rather than sliced, so the polenta will be more like this.

Cashew nut chicken + saag + cauliflower rice - Making a triple batch of sauce this time, freezing the other two portions for future months.

Sweet potato bolognese + salad - again, no real recipe. It's just 1/2 lb ground beef, 1/2 lb hot sausage, 1 jar marinara and 2 large sweet potatoes that have been spiralized. (spiralizer post is here).

And the grocery list for the month. The top left corner is where I write down pantry items that I'm pretty sure I have but I need to check. I get all of my meat for the month at Whole Foods and then divide it up and freeze it. For veg, I decide which items I can get at the beginning of the month (onions, garlic, etc, usually last fine, bell peppers and fennel and the like will hold up a couple weeks) and which items I have to get week by week (salad greens, mushrooms, etc). For the most part, it's been going pretty smoothly and I feel like I spend a lot less time at the store.

Once a month meal planning - February revisited

February was a little rough for me. I was pretty emotional about my dad, Dustin had an insanely heavy work schedule so I was solo most nights, and it just didn't seem worth it to cook all those weeknight meals. I ended up skipping two of the lentil dishes I had planned (weeks 3 and 4), but that's fine because the lentils will keep. I stopped even marking up my planning page after week 2 because I was cooking on different days and just generally doing whatever was most convenient, rather than sticking strictly to the schedule. But it was still nice to have it laid out and know what my options were.

I'm sticking with the monthly system again for March (post up tomorrow). I think it's helping a lot because we hardly ate out at all in February (although that might be due to the whole D = working, me = sad thing I mentioned). I did go over on our grocery budget this month by quite a bit, partly because we entertained a few times and I made a Costco trip to restock some critical items (enormous bag of chocolate chips, bourbon) and partly because I might have been treating myself a bit too much (flowers, wine, good cheese, nice beer). But hey, you do what you need to do, right? I'm going to buckle down again this month and make sure to hit our target.



New recipes I tried in February: 

Lentil and garlic sausage cassoulet - I thought this was pretty tasty but so much work for a relatively simple dish! You make the broth, skim, then cook the lentils, then you're supposed to bake everything in a casserole dish. I would only make this again if I were going to streamline it a lot, or I would have to move it to weekend only rotation.

Spiced butternut squash, lentil and goat cheese salad - This was great, and it came together super fast because I did cooked the lentils and roasted the squash on Sunday afternoon while I was doing stuff around the house.

Canal house lentils - Didn't get to this one.  : (

Once a month meal planning - February

And on to February! I planned this out super early because I knew that the last thing I'd want to do the weekend we were moving was handle a massive grocery list. I did, however, manage to convince myself to hit the grocery store on February 1st for our big shop and I was pretty impressed with myself because what I wanted to do was lie in bed and order take out (full disclosure - we did go out with friends on Monday and then order take out with them on Tuesday, so we're not exactly starting this month off strong but when your dear friend is only in town for a few days, you take advantage).



I stuck with my basic formula for this month, with weekly lentils and crock pot meals and I'm still hitting the sweet potato bolognese pretty hard. I keep thinking one week I'll realize I'm sick of it but it hasn't happened yet.

Recipes for this month:

Lentil and garlic sausage cassoulet - new to me recipe, only making a 1/2 batch because otherwise we'd be eating it forever. I couldn't find slab bacon so I got a small piece of pork belly instead. Maybe that's the same thing, now that I think about it?

Cashew nut chicken - Using the other half of the sauce that I froze last month (next time I might make a triple batch of sauce - it was so lovely to just dump everything together in the morning).

Spiced butternut squash, lentil and goat cheese salad - new to me, looks so good.

Crockpot beef stew - just realized I don't have the recipe for this posted anywhere. My mom always made it growing up and it's super easy. 1 lb beef stew meat, a couple potatoes, some carrots, some celery, all roughly chunked, 1 can of V8, 1 tbsp of sugar, 2 tbsp minute tapioca, ~ 2 tsp salt, cooked in the crockpot on low for 8 hours. I always consider looking for a fancier recipe, but this one never fails and it is so easy.

Canal house lentils - new to me, looks simple and delicious. Skeptical about the eight servings, though. In my experience, a cup of dried lentils usually equals four servings. Maybe it's meant to be a side dish?

Chicken enchilada soup - always.

Black lentils with caramelized onions - but just once this month.

Sweet potato and black bean chili - again, using up the odds and ends of the spiralized sweet potatoes. Last month I couldn't find ground chipotle so I just used some canned chipotles in adobo sauce (not a whole can! they are spicy) and it was delicious. I froze the other half of the can so I can do it again this time around.

Sweet potato bolognese - again, no real recipe. It's just 1/2 lb ground beef, 1/2 lb hot sausage, 1 jar marinara and 2 large sweet potatoes that have been spiralized. (spiralizer post is here).



The worst part of this for me is figuring out the grocery list with this many meals in the mix, but I assume I'll get better with that. I just jot down the ingredients for every meal, then consolidate them on a single page, keeping them roughly divided into categories (produce, meat, canned goods, etc). I check the pantry to see what I have and cross those things off. I usually then split the list into what I need from each store, but this month I lost energy at that point and it was fairly well divided anyways. I get my produce from Jons (best produce prices + selection around here) or the farmer's market, meat from Whole Foods, odds and ends from TJs or the regular grocery store. What surprises me is that once I get it all boiled down and consolidated, the major shopping trip really isn't that huge or that expensive! With perishable produce I also note down the week I need it (and make a note on my actual meal planning sheet), so that I can just get it that week.

I don't know - is my scribbled out grocery list the weirdest thing I've ever posted? Maybe next month I'll remember to take a picture before I write all over it and wad it up in my bag to take it out to multiple stores.

Previous once a month meal planning posts - January planning and January execution.

Once a month meal planning - January revisited

You guys, I loved having all my meals planned for the month. Looooved it. Front loading the "real" cooking on M/T/W worked really well for us because it left us a lot of flexibility at the end of the week but ensured that we always had enough leftovers to take to work for lunches. Grocery shopping was super minimal week to week, which makes me happy. We also came in below our usual grocery budget, which is probably because we weren't at the store as often and there was almost no food waste, which makes me happy (totally guilty of being overly optimistic while shopping and buying more produce, etc, than we can actually use - I've been working hard to improve this).



I did adjust as necessary (see all my scribbles - I was trying to keep track of how it played out) and we almost never needed our Th/F quick meals because we usually had leftovers. But it worked out well to have the ingredients because we used them for weekend meals and ate out less.

Even with the move thrown in there things didn't get too hectic. I just cooked as scheduled M/T/W and then as soon as I was done cooking on Wednesday I cleaned up and packed our entire kitchen other than the bare essentials (two bowls, two plates, two cups, a skillet and a smattering of utensils). I knew we'd have enough leftovers to get us through the rest of the week so we'd basically just be microwaving and cooking eggs.

I was so excited about this system that I got my February meals planned well ahead of time so that I'd be all ready to jump in on week one despite our move. Those will be up tomorrow! Fair warning - it will be almost as boring as this month.

Which leads me to this question - did we get bored? Nope! I was afraid we would, but it turns out we're just really hungry when we sit down for dinner and the fact that we ate something two weeks ago doesn't even register. I'm relieved because am I the only one who sees those fancy meal plans and thinks people are crazy for being willing to make a different breakfast, lunch and dinner every day? I love the idea of that much variety but in practice it is way too much work for me. That said, I did search for a few new lentil recipes to try out in February because I don't want to push my luck.

Once a month meal planning - January

Trying out this new thing, where I only plan monthly instead of weekly. I don't know that I'll do this indefinitely, but January is always a rough month for me and this one will be particularly insane. Work is crazy for me, D is going to be studying a lot, we're going to be moving. I didn't take the moving thing into account when I made this schedule, so part of me feels like I've already failed, but I'll adjust as necessary.



I've always been a weekly meal planner but I'm a fairly repetitive cook. I tend to make the same few dishes regularly, so I figured - why not run with it? Those of you who like to make new things all the time will probably die of boredom just looking at my list. I did have that month where I tried making a different (new) dish every weeknight and it was fun, but not sustainable for me.

What I did here was assign each night of the week a different theme. Mondays are spiralizer nights (and you'll notice that this month I'm just sticking with our favorite - sweet potato noodles with bolognese). Tuesdays are lentils, and this month I'm alternating between two of my favorite recipes. Wednesdays are crockpot nights as long as it's chilly. Thursdays are for baked potatoes and Fridays are for whatever can be made as fast as possible, because I have a three hour weekly meeting on Friday evenings and by the time I get home I'm exhausted and starving.

I've front loaded the recipes that involve actual cooking at the beginning of the week. That leaves me flexibility because if we have too many leftovers I can just skip the planned Thu-Fri meals and the ingredients will keep till next week (or the weekend). We're only in the first week and I'm already taking advantage of that because D ended up having lunch meetings every day this week and didn't need to take any lunches to work, so the three cooked meals will probably carry us.

As usual, I don't meal plan for weekends, because we often end up being out and about and if we're at home there's generally leftovers or something quick.

Can't decide if I'm going to get super bored and go off the rails. I actually don't think this is much more repetitive than I am normally, but there's something about seeing it all laid out that makes it feel more repetitive.

Recipes that I'm using this month: 

Sweet potato noodles with bolognese - not a real recipe, but I mention it in my spiralizer post and it's one of our favorites. I bought all the meat at once and divided it up and froze it into four portions. If I was truly getting serious, I could have made a huge batch of marinara to portion and freeze but I just bought four jars. Baby steps.
Coconut curried red lentils 
Black lentils with caramelized onions
Butternut squash coconut chili (new to me)
Chicken in cashew nut sauce - as usual, I'll make a double batch of the sauce and freeze half for next month
Sweet potato and black bean chili - I love this recipe and I've been making it about every three weeks to use up the odds and ends of sweet potato leftover from spiralizing.
Chicken enchilada soup - still a favorite around here.

This month is going to completely decimate my freezer supply of homemade chicken broth, so I'll probably make sure that a couple of our weekend meals consist of rotisserie chicken so I can restock. The homemade broth makes such a huge difference in soups.

I did most of our shopping last weekend and it was surprisingly not that much work. We're only two people, and there are a few things I'll have to pick up weekly (salad greens and produce) but all in all it was really manageable. It was also really cheap. I know the bill will go up because we'll still be purchasing things throughout the month, but it was crazy to see what a small portion of our grocery budget went towards the bulk of our food needs this month. The lentils help with that. We're not vegetarian (clearly) but I try to limit how much meat I eat and this is the general level that I'm comfortable with. This month we have red meat once per week (but we each get two servings because there are leftovers) and we have chicken every other week (again, we each get a couple servings). I've posted about how we approach meat here.

I'm mildly obsessed with meal planning and don't hesitate to switch up my system as our lives change, so you can find lots of other posts on it here if you search "meal plan." My original post on developing my meal planner is here and my 2014 update is here. This post is about coming up with your own system. Here is a post on three weeks of meals in detail.

Fall meal planning update

I'm still mostly using my meal planning system, although the actual cooking definitely fell by the wayside for most of the summer due to the heat. Instead I tried to plan as many fast, preferably oven-less, meals as possible.

Now that it's starting to cool down I tweaked our meal planning a bit. Soup is sounding more appealing, so I'm subbing out our usual large salad meal for a hearty soup meal. I've also reduced the total servings I aim for each week from 16 to 12. This is because I've been cooking my lunches separately so I don't need to factor them into our planning. When my cooking was sporadic during the summer I couldn't rely on leftovers (quesadillas aren't great the next day) and I kept purchasing lunch, which I hate to do. So much money, so little enjoyment. If I could actually go out to eat I might see it differently but I don't like paying $7 for a lackluster sandwich to eat at my desk.

So, new lunch plan: brown rice + frozen stir fry veg + protein (usually tofu a few times a week and fish or meat a couple times) + stir fry sauce. It's a fake stir fry. And yes, the microwaved frozen vegetables are not nearly as good as fresh would be but this is the fastest, most consistent lunch I've been able to come up with. It takes virtually no effort and hits all the key nutritional groups I need to feel good. All I really have to do is remember to cook a batch of brown rice on Sunday evening and purchase some tofu. I don't even bother pre-cooking the tofu most of the time. This is where it really comes in handy that I can eat the same lunch every day and not get bored.

And my new meal planning structure looks like this:
Soup - 1x per week, 4 - 6 servings
Meat/lentils/pasta - 1x per week, 4 - 6 servings
Easy meal - 1x per week, 2 - 4 servings

I just need to round up some hearty soup recipes, preferably including a few that can be done in the crockpot. I've been searching around and hopefully I can share some as I try them. I love the crockpot, but the most common recipes you find are usually meat based and we try not to eat meat all the time. I'm hunting for vegetarian recipes as well and there are some that look pretty awesome.

More meal planning posts here.

How to create your own meal plan system

I feel like I post about meal planning way more than any normal person should, but I get so many questions about it! I started doing the family meal planning and cooking when I was 15 and at this point it's mostly second nature. There are all kinds of complicated systems you can set up (I used to coordinate all our meal planning with the grocery store sale flyers) but I don't have time for anything complicated right now. Here's how I set up our current meal planning system, step by step. It might take an hour or two to get everything in place (depending on where you're starting from) but the payoff is barely spending any time meal planning on a weekly basis.

You will need: 
A 3-ring binder (I'd recommend a 1.5")
Page protectors
Tab dividers (~5, make sure they stick out past the page protectors - like these)
The ability to do basic arithmetic

{meal planning on sunday}

Figure out how many servings you need each week. I only meal plan for the weekdays, because our weekends are generally crazy and we aren't at home much.
Ask yourself - Are you planning for just dinners? Dinners with leftovers to take for lunch? How many days a week do you buy yourself lunch? Now do the math. 
D and I eat in almost every night most weeks, so I count on 10 servings minimum (5 nights x 2 people). I take my lunch to work most days, but probably one day a week I eat soup or something instead, so I count myself for 3 - 4 lunches. D always eats out on Tuesdays and usually at least one other day during the week so I only count him for 2 - 3 lunches. This gets us to about 16 servings of food needed during the week.

Decide how often you're willing to cook and how high your tolerance for leftovers is. I love leftovers and D is perfectly happy with them. We also have limited time and there's no way we are going to cook every night. Right now I plan to cover our 16 servings with 3 meals throughout the week. If you hate leftovers, you are going to have to cook more often. There isn't really any way around it. In that case, I'd recommend having a good supply of quick meal recipes on hand.

Choose your meal categories. This will just depend on what you eat most often. We have a big salad (usually grains + veg), one meal with either meat, lentils or pasta and one quick meal (burritos, quesadillas, eggs, etc). You might want one meat, one pasta, one fish. Or whatever. Don't get overly fussy about the categories. Soba noodles are pasta, obviously, but I count soba noodle salad in my large salad category. Because it's cold, so to my mind it is salad. You can also cook more than one meal from each category, if you want pasta 2x per week or something. Having this structure can be really helpful for keeping yourself on track if you have specific goals. When I lumped together meat/lentils/pasta into one weekly category, our meat consumption suddenly went down because we now eat meat every second or third week instead of weekly, without even thinking about it. I just keep meat, lentils and pasta in three separate tabbed sections, which helps me use them more evenly. If I had lentils the week before, I'll tend to pick a pasta or meat dish this week.

Figure out what your goal servings are for each meal, based on your weekly needs. I usually aim for a 6 - 8 serving salad (which sometimes means I need to double the recipe), a 4 - 6 serving meat/lentils/pasta meal and a 4 serving quick meal. I use this spreadsheet right now (previously used this one) but you can easily customize your own.

Gather up your base recipes. When I did this I had a ton of recipes floating around. The more superfluous recipes you have, the longer your meal planning takes. Just flipping through them eats up time each week. Strip out just the ones you are likely to make on any given weeknight. I kept my huge recipe binder for special occasions, holidays, desserts, etc. My weekly binder is much slimmer and only has meals I'm likely to make during the week.

Type up your quick meals (if you're using this category) on a single page and add it to the front of the binder. These aren't recipes, they're reminders. Think about what you cook when you don't have time for anything complicated. I made quick notes about what ingredients we needed for each meal and that was basically it, along with a short description of how to cook a frittata.

Organize your binder. Label your tabs with your categories and start dividing up your recipes. I keep all my recipes in page protectors so they are slightly less disgusting. When I did this I noticed that our big salads category was a little skimpy, so I specifically searched around for some recipes to fill out this category, printed them out and put them in the binder. After I make one for the first time we decide if we want it again, if not, I toss it out.

Do your meal planning (see old post for details). Look over your schedule for the week to see if you need to plan low (going out during the week) or high (guests coming over for dinner). Check your fridge to see if you have leftover ingredients you need to use up. Choose the specified number of meals from each category. Pull those recipes out, make your grocery list and then put them back in the front of the binder, before the dividers. This will make it faster to pull them out as you cook during the week. Check your grocery list against your pantry. All of this should take no longer than 20 minutes, once you have the system set up. I don't agonize over choosing meals. You're going to eat every single day of your life and there are no wrong choices. Once you've got your lists, shop. D and I usually split up the shopping based on convenience and when we need the items.

Roughly schedule your cooking nights based on your schedule that week. Lately I've been designating one free evening and cooking two meals. The grain salads are usually better the next day, so I'll make our salad and stash it in the fridge. At the same time, I'll make our other big meal for the week. This saves me a little time because I'm only washing the knives, cutting boards, mandoline, measuring cups, once. Bulk cooking is not my favorite thing to do. I'm having to juggle two recipes, make sure I'm not mixing anything up, there is a lot of chopping and washing vegetables. If I had shorter days, I would absolutely make dinner almost every night, because I enjoy cooking, but this works.

Have a back up plan! Sometimes we have a week where we end up eating more and Friday night rolls along and we're out of planned meals. Or we don't feel like eating leftovers. I keep a couple frozen meals from Trader Joe's in our freezer for those situations or, rarely, we'll order takeout or, more frequently, we'll decide to have an impromptu meal out. I have a relatively low tolerance for take out because I love it if it's an indulgence but it bums me out if we're doing it because we don't know what else to do. Then it doesn't feel exciting, it feels depressing.

Stop trying to be perfect. Sometimes I don't plan correctly and we run out of food. Sometimes I overplan and we have too much food and get sick of it. Sometimes I try a new recipe and it isn't that great but I feel like I have to soldier through the leftovers anyways. This is the fastest route to a week of takeout and guilt. If you make something you really don't like, toss it out and change your plan. (I have a really hard time doing this and will instead attempt to avoid the fridge - I hate waste, but delaying it doesn't change it)

{scribbles}

The upside to meal planning is that you save time and money. Quite a bit of money, actually. When I'm being good about meal planning, our grocery spending is shockingly low (compared to our usual, at least). It's because I don't buy on impulse and we're better about using everything up. Our weekly grocery needs aren't huge, which makes the shopping way easier. And it just doesn't take as much time or effort as you might think. This sounds insane when I write it all out but I promise you that I usually spend 15 minutes max thinking about our meals and writing up our grocery list.

Three weeks of meal plans in detail

In the comments last week someone was curious about what the week to week looks like with meal planning in the new(ish) system, so I'll recap what I've done the last three weeks. I usually do the meals in the order listed but the days vary and I'll adjust if necessary. I didn't keep track of what days each of these meals were cooked, so I'm working from memory.

{week 1 - meal prep - sorry, the planning page was long gone by the time i started this post}

Week 1: Basically starting from scratch because our fridge was bare.
Salad (Monday): Chinese chicken salad with red chile peanut dressing
Meat/lentils/pasta (Tuesday): Soba noodles with sesame-ginger-soy vinaigrette
Easy meal (Thursday): Bean burritos

Planning thoughts: I'd been having major cravings for Take a Bao's side salad, which is their Chinese chicken salad without the chicken. I was torn on whether to go with baked tofu or chicken for the salad protein, but D offered to pick up a rotisserie chicken from Whole Foods on his way home. And then the noodles just sounded good. I'm currently searching for a great soba noodle recipe.

Advance prep: Washed and chopped all vegetables for the Chinese chicken salad and the soba noodles. Set aside in separate containers, labelled. Made dressings for the salad and the noodles, labelled (I store the dressing directly in the containers that come with the blender because they have lids and it means fewer dishes, but obvs it would also work in jars).

Recipe thoughts: The salad was pretty good but not what I was looking for. I may have sliced the cabbage a little too thin and the dressing wasn't exactly what I wanted. Clearly, this means I need to go back and taste test the T.A.B salad several times (strictly for recipe development). The soba noodles were good as well, and might end up on our regular rotation. I think I was more into them than D was, but that's pretty standard with noodles of most varieties.

{week 2}

Week 2: Random ingredients from the week before - sour cream, cheese, cilantro, tortillas
Salad (Monday): Farro with roasted veg and fontina (doubled the recipe)
Meat/lentils/pasta (Tuesday): Coconut curried red lentils (+ roasted cauliflower and naan from TJs)
Easy meal (Thursday): Frittata with roasted cauliflower, orange bell peppers and fontina

Planning thoughts: I decided our burrito fixings would hold up for another week, although we did have breakfast burritos a few times so that was helping make a dent. I wanted to test out this farro salad and D requested the red lentils, which was perfect because we could use up the leftover cilantro. I figured we'd have leftover vegetables from something, so I decided on a frittata for our end of the week easy meal. The orange bell pepper was a spontaneous addition, because they were on sale.

Advance prep: Minimal this week. I could have chopped all the vegetables in advance but I didn't have much time on Sunday and I had Monday off that week so saving time wasn't a big issue. I roasted twice as much cauliflower as we needed on Tuesday so that I could chop up half and use it in the frittata later in the week, so it was a really quick Friday night meal. I used up the rest of the fontina in the frittata as well.

Recipe thoughts: The farro salad was so good that we were tempted to make it again the next week. I think I'm going to play with it a little and then share my modifications here soon. I'd never made a frittata with roasted cauliflower before but we loved it and will probably do it again.

{week 3}

Week 3: Random ingredients - orange bell pepper, sour cream, tortillas
Salad (Monday): Orzo with feta and bell peppers
Meat/lentils/pasta (Thursday): Turkey burgers with romaine slaw (+ side salad)
Easy meal (Tuesday): Roasted vegetable quesadillas (based on Moosewood Cookbook recipe)

Planning thoughts: We wanted to use up the last of the burrito ingredients and also the random bell pepper I had leftover from the previous week when they were on sale.

Advance prep: Sunday evening I chopped everything for the orzo salad and made the dressing. I also chopped and then roasted the vegetables for the quesadillas. On Monday all I had to do was boil the orzo, toss it with the veg, the feta and the dressing. The quesadillas were also a 15 minute meal because I had the vegetables waiting. The turkey burgers I made the day of because I never buy meat ahead of time, just in case something comes up and we don't get around to using it.

I also randomly ended up making butternut squash soup that week, because they were on a good sale and I haven't made it all winter. We ate it for lunches and also as a side with the quesadillas and it was a good addition.

Recipe thoughts: The orzo salad is one of our standbys and it was reliably good. I really enjoy those turkey burgers and they're a quick weeknight meal. I always use the mini brioche buns from Whole Foods if we're doing burgers, because they're the best. I've never posted about the roasted vegetable quesadilla recipe because I don't make it often, but it's always in the back of my mind. It's the perfect winter quesadilla.

It drives me a little crazy that this round up is three weeks instead of a nice even four, but we had some big family medical appointments scheduled this week and I knew I'd be tired and unmotivated to cook so I just ditched meal planning altogether and baked a giant side of fish, steamed a pot of broccoli and made some rice on Tuesday and we're going to eat that Tuesday - Friday. After years of experience, I can tell you this - knowing yourself is the best way to succeed at meal planning. If I try to convince myself that I can suck it up and just make dinner even when I know I won't want to, I will fail and order take out and feel guilty about the wasted groceries I bought. I mean, sure, set reasonable expectations for yourself or you'll never "feel" like cooking. But also be realistic and reduce your cooking schedule if that's what it takes for you to manage. 

New schedule, new meal planner

Our lives have rearranged a bit this year. D now has the shorter commute, so he going to take over most of the grocery shopping and more of the cooking. This is strange for me because I've been doing the majority of the cooking for years and I have a hard time not hovering when someone else is in the kitchen. D is perfectly capable of cooking but he doesn't have the routine down and he was worried about getting stuck when deciding what to make each week.

I wanted our food prep to be simplified this year anyways, so over the holidays I worked on modifying our system a bit. We now only plan for 3 meals a week and the categories are pared down.

{meal planning}

I disassembled our enormous recipe binder and pulled out our weeknight standbys and then separated them into the four categories I'd selected (the extra category is for sides, in case we feel like adding them to a meal). The remaining recipes are in a new binder which is more for special occasions or entertaining. Each week we plan for one large salad (something that will hold up in the fridge and make good leftovers), one hearty meal based on lentils/meat/pasta (split into three sections for ease) and one quick meal. I made a list of our usual quick meals and the ingredients we'd need for them, along with basic instructions. I don't use a recipe when I make a frittata, for instance, but that sucks for D, who would prefer to work with instructions. This way we have everything pulled together.

To set up meals for the week we do a quick scan to see if we have partially used ingredients from the week before. Then we just choose one recipe from each category, make the grocery list and we're good to go. Having the sections split up this way makes it much easier.

Past adventures in meal planning -
Cooking every weekday for a month
Developing our own meal planning system

In case you're interested in the updated meal planning sheet I use, here is the PDF after the jump (sorry for the click through, but embedding docs in here makes the main page go totally wonky).